Content Marketing and iMedia - what's your strategy?

We're all familiar with the content is king maxim, but how many of us have taken it seriously? As a segment of a marketing strategy, your clients might be very clued up and tell you what they want and when they want it. Their strategy might well be hidden behind their decisions. We might just be picking up their demands and grumbling about 'clients making changes again', or, 'clients adding in things again'. You know, they say things like 'put this up on the web site ASAP', then a week later 'why isn't it linked to the blog?', and the next day, 'we need to produce a short video segment based on it to go on Facebook in the next couple of days', and so on.

But it all might be part of their content marketing strategy. That should make us stop grumbling and change our attitude to some respect. Yes, they should have indicated that they had phased roll-outs of content for different purposes, but to them it might just be self evident. Understanding your clients and their business has got harder, that's true, but we can't serve their needs until we understand what they are trying to achieve.

Our clients' marketing people have traditionally driven many of the processes that have caused grief for the iMedia lot. It was interesting for us to dip a toe in their water this week for a change and look at some of the content pressures they are facing.

Apparently content marketing has been a strong topic over 2012. They are tasked with embracing all the interactive media channels at the salient time for their messages and addressing the right audiences with the right messages to maximise awareness/sales/brand-building and so on. Now, we appreciate that the different channels from website, microsite, blog, mobile, Twitter, Facebook, electronic billboards and connected tv appeal to different audience profiles, and that content needs to be tailored to suit the profile and the display, but perhaps what we haven't bought into is that the marketers are on top of the reactions to the messages and want to respond accordingly. So if your client needs fast response, how can you provide it and at what cost?

This is the crux of the matter for us. We need to know the type of demands on our resources and plan accordingly. This means that the questions should be asked about demands and response times across channels from the beginning of your relationship. Is that happening? Then you also need to consider reviewing your longer term projects where your client's offerings have grown organically as the channels have matured. Are they now asking for more content across more channels than anticipated? Should you reassess what you are doing, the stretch on your resources and the costs involved?

To give an example of what marketers have been facing this year on the question of content marketing, take a look at a summary of key speakers, Marketing Basics: 7 B2B Content Marketing Tactics, by David Kirkpatrick at Marketing Sherpa, September 12th.

Tactic 1 Understand that content comes in more than one format.
Tactic 2 Find content topics and provide value
Tactic 3 Map content to B2B buying stages
Tactic 4 Remember that content marketing is part of an inbound strategy
Tactic 5 Use social media to distribute content
Tactic 6 Think like a publisher – create a content calendar
Tactic 7 Think beyond free with content marketing

Their pressures become our pressures, so it's as well to be ready.

Clients and commissioning iMedia

Just as we moan about clients, they moan about us too. It's best we listen so that we can address their concerns because satisfied clients mean return business. Also, someone else's dissatisfied clients may mean business for us.

Many problems that are thrown up in iMedia development can be avoided if some steps are followed at the beginning of the project. It goes back to the questions you ask your clients prior to beginning work. Maybe they will be experienced enough to already formulate a good brief for you, but it is just as well to have your sets of questions and mentally tick off the answers from the clients brief. Then you’ll just need to raise the outstanding issues you have left.

Digital Mosaic, What clients need to consider when commissioning a web site, have their own version of a project scoping questionnaire that covers General, Branding, Technical, and Design issues they feel are needed to set a project on track. Does it ring true for you? Have you a similar set of queries? The MRG Blog from 23rd March, How to approach Commissioning a Website or Web project, addresses client's concerns in a broader brush way and rather than questions, they highlight a client's attitude and general approaches to defining what is needed from the web site.

But there is a more common set of problems that arise because of interdependencies between agencies and web developers. The agencies have clients they are already working with for other media requirements and need developers to help out with the iMedia requirements; those that haven't their own in-house teams, that is. It seems that this relationship teases out quite a few gremlins as stated in Caroline's Blog for White Label Development on Outsourcing Web Development. This makes interesting reading and points to the classic tensions of creativity versus technology versus user-friendliness and so on. Usually these are hidden facets in in-house teams where front and back end developers clash. Ah! The pivotal role of the project manager becomes crucial in this set of circumstances.

And let's not forget those building apps. Because they are small and neat, usually tight in functionality by nature of their application, their development can be almost bundled in with other iMedia requirements. But, their development shares a lot with web development issues when you look at the pleas from Rob Borley's 15th March blog for In-traction, The two most common questions asked of apps developers. These are by the way, How much does it cost? and how long does it take? Seems apps developers need their own set of scoping questions before starting any work. What do you do?

Clients' prior business experiences and the consequences for us

In these financially constrained times it means more to retain your clients rather than put your time and effort into finding new ones. That is, of course, unless the client has more than taken advantage of the relationship to the point that the people involved are in danger of losing your company money!

That said, do you know your company's churn? The average online company churn as of 2 years ago was reported as 98.7%! 60% of first time clients dropped their company within six weeks! See Harris Interactive Src Risk, Churn Win Back Workshop, slide 9. Harris Interactive states that if you retain clients then their value/spend increases with time. Now that can mean a lot.

Why do your clients leave? Have you any intelligence on this? Perhaps you should try to find out. It tends to be the role of the Account Manager/Project Manager to understand the reasons for leaving, but is the intelligence brought together and analysed in terms of your company performance?

Harris Interactive cites several reasons for clients defecting: unmet expectations, low perceived value, competitive attraction, and unexpressed/unresolved complaints. (See slide 14 Causes/Effects of Risk and Churn.) How are you defining defections?

It is hard to find general business information on client reactions and their impact but harder still for interactive media businesses. However, Garry, in his Intelligent Positioning Blog, the Integrating Value section of The Value in Understanding the Customer Journey, May 2011, makes clear statements about the failure of some companies to fully understand the customer experience of their clients. He says that only 30% had looked at mobile habits and only 34% had taken account of social media behaviour.

If what he says is true — that winning a new client costs up to 5 times more than retaining an old one — shouldn't we be analysing the risks of churn?

Prior experience in iMedia affects present design issues

One of the first issues we recommend you tackle with new projects and new clients is to understand any previous experiences your clients have had with technology and designers. Their prior experience will have an impact. What did they like/dislike about their experiences? These insights can affect your decisions of whether to work with them, how to work with them and what solutions to suggest.

Often as a result of this analysis, you may recognise that you might have to educate your client. They may have inappropriate expectations about what can be achieved for the time and money. They may be too internally focused by their own corporate politics and forget that they are trying to influence their audience. Who is their prime target market? Can they articulate who they are? Do they really know their market and its relationship with technological communication?

Equally, prior experience works both ways. Your experiences are part of your expertise. Your client should value and listen to your intelligence. Do they?

As part of your education you might like to point your clients at 10 Harsh Truths about Corporate Websites suggesting they think long and hard about all the points but particularly 4: Your website cannot appeal to everyone, 6: Your website is not all about you, and 8: Design by committee brings death. Nice analysis, Damien and Tania!

What you want from your clients is an enviable list of recommendations like WStore – surely they all can’t be made up! (No, they’re not because we know one person in the list.)

These would demonstrate positive prior experiences with iMedia, satisfied clients and return business. How would comments from your clients shape up?